ARTWORK of Samia A. Halaby

Over five decades of questioning why and what, my mind has developed its
paths to places that make painting as delightfully delicious as bread and fruit on an
afternoon in sunshine. It takes me to fields of golden wheat, to eating
watermelon in the speckled shade of an olive or fig tree, to vistas of the blue
sky meeting the blue Mediterranean and coming to my bare toes on the sands of a
beach.

Painting is the most beautiful of languages, and difficult. I find the solid
foundations in the history of pictures. My dialogue is rarely with curators or
historians or critics or dealers or other artists. Their interests in the world
of art are formed and their guidance is intimately connected to those
interests. From the solidity of the past and the common sense of present
friends I search for what will be significant to a revolutionary future that
I hope will come soon.

My paintings are abstract because I respect most the revolutionary artists
of the 20th century. The artists of Cubism, Futurerism, Suprematism, Constructivism, the
Mexican muralists, and the Abstract Expressionism are the best of the past
century. I want to follow them and continue on the path they began. Programming
kinetic painting on computer and producing a video of moving abstractions with
sound is a result of taking this path. On the other hand, because of my
anger over what the Israeli state does to Palestine and Palestinians, I also do documentary drawing on
that subject matter -- the most significant of these is the word-and-picture treatise on the
Kafr Qasem Massacre executed on innocent Palestinian villages in 1956.

Drawings and Writings Documenting the Kafr Qasem Massacre of 1956

Please click on the picture above to enter the Memorial to the victims of
the Kafr Kasem massacre of October 29, 1956. See the introductory picture and
then click again. There are fourteen pages of pictures and information and
twelve pages of witness statements. Please be sure to visit the roster of
victims and the artist's statment about methods of documentation, research, and
the making of the documentary drawings.